A lyrical journey across an unusual landscape chronicles the trauma and resilience of vulnerable populations facing conflict, disaster, poverty and exclusion. Filmed in refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border, this launch film for Humanity & Inclusion (the non-profit formerly known as Handicap International) combines live action & animation to tell their stories.

The illustrations for each sequence in the film were hand drawn and then animated. We opted for a simple, hand-doodle style of illustration to convey a humanity true to the mandate of the organization, and a fragility inherent to the stories told. While grounded in the emotional landscape of real traumas and events, the animation remains imaginative and poetic.

The challenge was to integrate the animation into the live action shots of the hands and the camera movement across the palms – to see and use the hand as a landscape. Also, to establish a narrative link between the animated world on the hands and the live footage of the refugees in the camps.